Page 24 of Hunted By Fae
Ruby is too harsh, too panicked on the gears. That same panic strangles her voice, “Where are we going?”
No one answers.
So Ruby turns the camper onto the road and takes the direction of the town.
Beyond the windows, the darkness still tumbles towards us.
I shift around to watch it roll like black poison over the horizon.
“Turn on the beams.” Ramona’s mutter comes from the front. It’s followed by a click as the bright lights are switched on—a useless preparation for that darkness spilling over the sealine.
“It’s just a blackout,” Tesni says, soft, then drops to sit beside me. The mattress dips. “It’s just… a blackout—it’s temporary.” Her gaze flings to me, desperate. “Right?”
She needs that to be true.
I could tell her it is temporary, that all is well. And it would be another lie.
I know what that darkness is, where it came from—and what comes with it.
This is not the sort of dark that comes with night. Not with stars and the gleam of the moon. A switch flicking in a room can’t illuminate this darkness.
This…
This is different.
Different than anything Tesni knows.
Different than anything this world has seen.
The blackness is thick enough to feel in the air, like heat; it is too thick to see a hand in front of a face; it is suffocating; it is the pressure of a weighted blanket draped over the shoulders.
This is darkness from another world.
A world of warriors and horror and violence—
A world of fae.
Their darkness is coming here.
It is invading.
I realise I am stuck in a fucking extermination.
TWO WEEKS LATER
FIVE
TESNI
It’s out there on the horizon, and I can’t tear my gaze off it.
There should only be ocean out there, dancing under the sunrays, a sprawling body of water that looks like it has no end.
Instead, I see coarse black brushstrokes violently painted over an ocean.
The darkness is so much more than black clouds. It is textured and thick and churning.
We are trapped in it.
